The Influence of Critical Audit Matters in the US on the Informativeness of Investors

In 2017, the PCAOB announced its new audit standard, AS 3101. One requirement is reporting critical audit matters (CAMs), starting June 30, 2019, for large accelerated filers. Using US data of CAM, we investigate whether the reporting of CAMs is informative for investors using a difference-in-differences approach and we use as proxies for investors’ informativeness, absolute abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume. Our motivation is to assess the relevance and the effectiveness of a new regulation aiming to improve audit quality. Overall, our findings provide some indications that the first-time implementation of CAMs might lead to investors avoiding those companies presumably because of uncertainty about the information being released. We also investigate the content of the CAM paragraph and do not find that the number, categories, or firm-specific/industry-common CAMs are value-relevant for investors. The results of this study provide insight into the new US auditor standard and the value-relevance of CAMs for investors. We suggest that standard setters should aim to improve the auditor report to make it more informational. Overall, our paper provides some evidence on the implementation and communicative value of the new CAM reporting, suggesting that CAMs are not informative for investors. We argue that this is the case potentially due to the additional information from CAMs which leads to complex information or information overload making investors less reluctant to invest on the companies with a significant number of CAMs reported

Abnormal Audit Fees and Audit Quality: The Influence of Financial Expertise in the Audit Committee

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 had a major influence on the relationship between auditors and clients, and gave audit committees the responsibility for approving and negotiating audit fees. Even if, in theory, abnormal audit fees should be associated with audit quality, there is not yet a consensus in the literature – which is limited and inconclusive – on the statistical significance of their relationship. Therefore, to fill this research gap, this study examines the association between a firm’s audit fees with audit quality, while also assessing the impact of audit committee members’ financial expertise on that relationship. Specifically, a large time frame is employed for regression analysis in a sample consisting of 3,599 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2018 in the US market. A two-stage approach is used, where the first model estimates audit fees based on the model’s residuals according to prior relevant studies, while the second model uses the aforementioned residuals as the main variable of interest in a logistic regression with the appearance of restatements as the dependent variable. The findings conclude that abnormal audit fees have a negative impact on audit quality. Furthermore, financial expertise in the audit committees has a positive impact on audit quality. These findings also conclude that there is no significant relationship between the interaction of abnormal audit fees and financial expertise in the audit committees and audit quality. These results are robust, after having been subject to a robustness check of a different audit quality proxy: discretionary accruals. This is consistent with the economic bonding theory and is in line with prior research

Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin in dehydrated patients: a preliminary report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Acute kidney injury has been recognized as a major contributor to end stage renal disease. Although neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (Ngal) has been reported as a promising biomarker for early detection of acute kidney injury, no study has yet examined its potential clinical impact in patients with normal renal function. The purpose of current study is to investigate possible difference in serum Ngal levels between dehydrated and control patients.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>A total of twelve patients presented with symptoms of mild dehydration defined by history of diarrheas or vomiting and orthostatic (postural) hypotension and an age and sex matched group of twelve control patients were included. The two groups of patients did not seem to differ in basic clinical and laboratory parameters. Serum Ngal was higher in dehydrated patients when compared to control group (Ngal = 129.4 ± 25.7 ng/mL vs 60.6 ± 0.4 ng/mL, p = 0.02). Ngal was not correlated with age, hemoglobin, white blood cell count, red blood cell count, urea or creatinine.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The presence of elevated Ngal levels in dehydrated patients may suggest its role as a very sensitive biomarker in even minimal and "silent" prerenal kidney dysfunction</p

Final report on dissemination, regulation, standardization, exploitation & training : D6.3

In D6.1 deliverable project dissemination, exploitation and training plans, as well as standardization & regulatory approach strategy was presented. The D6.2 reported on the necessary updates of these strategies and the actions taken by the partners in line with them, as well as the obtained results. In this D6.3 deliverable, a full set of project dissemination activities, standardization & regulatory contributions as well as an operator’s “cook book” outlining steps necessary for full deployment of ON functionality and services, are presented.Deliverable D6.3 del projecte OneFITPostprint (author’s final draft

Results analysis and validation - D5.3

Deliverable D5.3 del projecte OneFITPostprint (author’s final draft

Performance evaluation of synergic operation of algorithms enabling opportunistic networks - D4.3

Deliverable D4.3 del projecte OneFITPreprin